A Few Thoughts on Comics from This Week

After a couple smaller weeks at the shop, this week was heavy duty in comparison. Wow.

I found New Avengers #50 to be enjoyable, despite the fact that the cover image never really happens within the book. This Avengers team is in flux and is trying to stabilize. As with last issue, Clint's speech at the end of the book makes it. I do look forward to the day when the 'new' can be dropped from the title. I understood its purpose at once point but is feeling increasingly lame.

Hulk #10 was interesting, a Defenders reunion that's not a Defenders reunion. As Jeph Loeb stories go, this could be interesting. That said, I'm tired of waiting on the identity on the Red Hulk. C'mon Jeph! It's getting old.

Mighty Avengers #22 also shows an Avengers team in flux. The storyline gets serious this issue and I'm very interested. Traditional Avengers villains show up and are causing some major problems. I wasn't sold on the art at first, but I'm liking it now. It's not my favorite style, but its a reasonable mix of stylistic and realistic.

Fantastic Four #564 starts a vacation story for the FF which is clearly not going to let them rest. The team's in Scotland to stay with Reed's minister cousin. Millar and Hitch have been doing a great job with the book. I'll admit that when they were announced I was concerned it would be too 'ultimate' in nature but I believe those fears to have been unfounded. It may not be Stan and Jack, but it might be Mark (Waid) and Mike (Weiringo).

Incredible Hercules #126 shows Herc's origin, details that we didn't have before that are explaining some of the storylines going on now. Better than I expected and the backup story isn't bad either.

Savage Dragon #145 starts the book over. Sorta. Not really but yeah. It's a good jumping on point for new readers and has quite a shock ending. Thumbs up.

Fear Agent #26 feels like it's preparing to end a series rather than be the penultimate issue in a storyline. A good chunk of the book is a knock-down drag out bare knuckle fight. It's mean but makes sense given the history of the book.

Transformers - Maximum Dinobots #3 continues my Generation 1 Transformers comic book joy. Simon Furman's Transformers work has never left my wanting. I'm not sure how we writes giant robots so well but I'm glad he can.

War Machine #3 continues the launch of a book for which I had very low expectations. It's been very interesting instead. I'm still not completely sure what happened to Rhodey but I'm willing to wait until they're ready to lay it all out. What they've revealed so far is pretty Deathlok but I'm sure there's a bit more to it. Actually, the way his character is currently seems like a mix of Deathlok and Terror Inc. This is good stuff.

As normal, there were others I enjoyed but these are the ones that I felt like commenting on.